Gallery: Apple Pop-Up museum and Vintage Computer Festival Southeast

The Apple Pop-Up museum was so popular, it'll re-open on May 18 and June 8.

Were you in Atlanta last weekend to visit the Apple Pop-Up Museum as part of the Vintage Computer Festival Southeast (VCFSE)? Some Ars readers were there, and we now have some photos from them (and organizer David Greelish) to show off how it went. Put together by the Atlanta Historical Computing Society—and one member in particular, Lonnie Mimms—the VCFSE and Apple Pop-Up Museum saw more than 1,100 visitors when it opened on April 20 and 21.

We wrote about the museum and the VCFSE last month before its opening to the public. "The festival was a huge success, and my group is intending on making this an annual event," Greelish told Ars. "The Apple Pop-Up Museum is a semi-permanent one, so Lonnie Mimms and his team are deciding how to proceed, but for now, they will be arranging tours by appointment. They are also considering opening on Saturdays."

Currently, the Apple Pop-Up museum is scheduled to open again a couple more times throughout the summer to meet public demand: May 18 and June 8. "It was pretty fantastically put together all-in-all," reader and museum visitor Colm Atkins told Ars.

Atkins was kind enough to allow us to use his photos for our gallery, and Greelish sent in a few more. Hopefully, clicking through the photos below gives a pretty good idea of what future visitors can expect if they choose to check out the Apple museum's ongoing exhibit. We included a handful of photos of the general VCFSE for good measure, which included gaming displays, an original Altair, a computer-building workshop, instructional presentations, and more. Check it out:

Colm Atkins

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Kyle Owen

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Kyle Owen, whose photos helped make up this photo gallery, had his own exhibit at the VCFS that showed off an Altair, ASR-33 teletype, Intel machines, and more.

Kyle Owen

Kyle Owen

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Listing image by Colm Atkins

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

As primitive as those machines are, they have a lot of charm and personality. I think it's great to remember that Sir Jony Ive designed the infamous Power Mac G4 "Cube" (not to mention his work on Newton and other products) as well as more successful devices like the iMac and iPod.

I still think the Apple ][ and original Mac are the epitome of beige box design. ;-)

The "toilet seat" iBook is not just distinctive on the outside - it also featured the first AirPort card (which connected to Apple's grey UFO-style AirPort base station, introduced at the same time.) It's kind of shocking to think that as recently as 1999 most laptops had to be plugged into wired Ethernet (or, heaven forbid, dial-up modems - the iBook contained one of those also) in order to connect to the internet.

I think Apple needs to throw iOS in the bin. Maybe adopt Android (why not? It's open source and much more powerful and diverse, and they legally could) or some other *nix

Apple doesn't need to adopt Android because Apple already has the most profitable mobile operating system...for developers. That's why most apps are developed for iOS first, because for every dollar an iOS developer makes, an Android developer makes only $0.24 (Flurry Analytics report). Even though Android has more handsets out there.

Also, there's only one Unix desktop system that can run mainstream apps like Microsoft Office and Photoshop natively. This Unix is readily available in retail stores across the nation, and it is called OS X, based on FreeBSD Unix, running on Apple Mac hardware. This is the most successful and profitable Unix desktop system ever sold to consumers, by an extremely wide margin, over any other Unix distro in history.

Apple's execution of its Unix system has worked so well that Mac sales and profitability have held up better than the well-documented declining PC sales in the last few years.

Also, there's only one Unix desktop system that can run mainstream apps like Microsoft Office and Photoshop natively. This Unix is readily available in retail stores across the nation, and it is called OS X, based on FreeBSD Unix, running on Apple Mac hardware. This is the most successful and profitable Unix desktop system ever sold to consumers, by an extremely wide margin, over any other Unix distro in history.

Apple's execution of its Unix system has worked so well that Mac sales and profitability have held up better than the well-documented declining PC sales in the last few years.

The OS itself is not readily available in retail. OS X is not for sale for non-Apple computers, despite the fact that the only thing the Apple computer does differently, is carry Apple's branding.

Also, Apple has done alright for themselves, but they aren't unseating Windows as the dominant OS any time soon. That isn't what you said, but it seems to be what you were driving at. I would attribute Apple's success as of late to interoperability between their consumer-grade OS, and consumer devices (media players, tablets, and phones) as well as their server-grade OS. Apple stuff has always played well together. AppleShare (is that it?) was super easy networking 20 years ago. It was trivial to share stuff between Apple computers when I was in school. It's challenging in Windows 7. Plus, Microsoft's phone is a joke and their video game console is a dirty panhandler. Meaning no offense to the homeless. Just that it's pathetic the things Microsoft throws behind the paywall. YouTube, Netflix, pizza delivery? Come on. And with Windows 8, Microsoft handed Apple a huge opportunity. If Apple opens OS X to any computer, Microsoft would be in some hot water. Most Windows users could just as easily be Linux users, but they want the corporate support Microsoft offers. They'd just as soon get it for Apple if Apple would sell to them. If I had to choose between Windows 8 and OS X, 7/10 I take OS X and buy a PS4. That's assuming "Stay with Windows 7" isn't an option. (The other 3/10, I suck it up and deal with Windows 8 for the sake of my Steam games. But I would not like it.)

Also, there's only one Unix desktop system that can run mainstream apps like Microsoft Office and Photoshop natively. This Unix is readily available in retail stores across the nation, and it is called OS X, based on FreeBSD Unix, running on Apple Mac hardware. This is the most successful and profitable Unix desktop system ever sold to consumers, by an extremely wide margin, over any other Unix distro in history.

Apple's execution of its Unix system has worked so well that Mac sales and profitability have held up better than the well-documented declining PC sales in the last few years.

The OS itself is not readily available in retail. OS X is not for sale for non-Apple computers, despite the fact that the only thing the Apple computer does differently, is carry Apple's branding.

Also, Apple has done alright for themselves, but they aren't unseating Windows as the dominant OS any time soon. That isn't what you said, but it seems to be what you were driving at. I would attribute Apple's success as of late to interoperability between their consumer-grade OS, and consumer devices (media players, tablets, and phones) as well as their server-grade OS. Apple stuff has always played well together. AppleShare (is that it?) was super easy networking 20 years ago. It was trivial to share stuff between Apple computers when I was in school. It's challenging in Windows 7. Plus, Microsoft's phone is a joke and their video game console is a dirty panhandler. Meaning no offense to the homeless. Just that it's pathetic te things Microsoft throws behind the paywall. YouTube, Netflix, pizza delivery? Come on. And with Windows 8, Microsoft handed Apple a huge opportunity. If Apple opens OS X to any computer, Microsoft would be in some hot water. Most Windows users could just as easily be Linux users, but they want the corporate support Microsoft offers. They'd just as soon get it for Apple if Apple would sell to them. If I had to choose between Windows 8 and OS X, 7/10 I take OS X and buy a PS4. That's assuming "Stay with Windows 7" isn't an option. (The other 3/10, I suck it up and deal with Windows 8 for the sake of my Steam games. But I would not like it.)

Ahh, that picture of the NeXT poster brought back some fond memories. Way back in the day I had a NeXT color slab which was pretty darn cool compared to the generic white box Windows 95 system that sat next to it on my desk. I ended up selling it to John Siracusa. I wonder if he still has it?

Re: the replica blue box in image 35 - Anyone with an hour or so to kill owes it to themselves to read the 1971 Esquire article "Secrets of the Little Blue Box". It's one of the most incredible long-form articles ever published in an American magazine, and it describes (with a bit of sensationalizing) the phone phreaking landscape in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Ma Bell could still be called to heel by a simple 2600hz tone.

Those days are long, long gone, but reading about them is incredible. In spite of all the technology we have today, I wish I had been born a decade or two earlier so I could have participated in that first amazing phreaking wave.

Man, I wish they could tour that outside of Atlanta - I'd love to see that up here in Indy! What a great look at the evolution of computing through one company's products. The family tree of iPods is my favourite pic.